Crash Into Me(19)

"Go back to your penthouse, Tristan. Find someone else to do your charity work on."

I threw every bit of power I had into slamming the door in his face, but he jammed his foot in the opening. It pushed back against my hands as he tried to stick his face in through the crack to speak.

"I just want us to talk. What can that hurt?"

"Go away. Your brand of talking just confuses me and then I feel bad after," I said as I pushed on the door to no avail.

"Please."

And there it was. The magic word. Please. God, my father's good parenting had come back to haunt me yet again. Something in the word please had a way of making any argument I had melt away.

I stopped pushing on the door and opened it up to see him staring at me with those brown eyes of his. As usual, they told me more than his words had, and now they were pleading with me to go with him one more time.

Even if I wanted to say no, which I didn't, I couldn't have. Whatever power he had over me I just couldn't fight it.

Hanging my head in resignation, I welcomed him in. "Give me a minute to get dressed."

As I walked to my room, I thought about how much I wished I could say no. It was no good that even before a man kissed me that he had this much control over my heart and mind. I couldn't imagine what he'd be able to do if we ever slept together.

He drove out of the city, and I knew where we were going. Back to the middle of nowhere, but this time my fear wasn't that he would kill me and leave me in pieces on the side of the road. No, this time I was afraid he'd already taken the most important piece of me and there was nothing I could do about it.








Chapter Four

We pulled up to the house he showed me the other night, and he turned off the car. He hadn't said ten words the entire way there, but now he turned to face me and said with a smile, "I didn't want things to end like they did last night."

His voice sounded sincere and made me want to make things better. "I'm sorry I didn't know the right answer."

"That's not important. The test was unfair. I'm the one who should be apologizing."

"Why did you bring me here, Tristan?"

"Let's go in."

As we walked toward the front door, he took my hand in his. His fingers enveloped mine and my hand seemed to disappear into his beneath his jacket. I felt small next to him now.

And then I looked up and what stood in front of me took my breath away. Massive white marble columns held up a front portico a full story high and flanked by the tallest evergreen trees I'd ever seen. A huge center section of the house broke off into a wing on the left and right sides, each the size of a full home itself. A second floor the same size as the main floor sat below a blue-grey color roof forty feet above the ground.

"Wow...your house is..." I stammered out as I stopped walking and craned my neck to take it all in.

Tristan smiled at me and my amazement. "I'm glad you like it. It's got twenty acres too. Come see the inside."

Just like his penthouse, the country house looked like something straight out of a magazine. A massive wrought iron and glass light fixture hung from the twenty foot ceiling in the wide entryway, and the beige marble floor gleamed beneath my feet. The walls were painted a cream color and looked like old world plaster. The entire room was simply stunning, and it was just the foyer!

Room after room unfolded before my eyes, each one unique and gorgeous. By the time he'd finished showing me the main area of the house, I'd seen four fireplaces already. Each room came with an explanation about how he planned to change it or what he wanted to keep, but I couldn't help but wonder what one person would do with all this space. I imagined him wandering through the rooms lonely and looking for someone to talk to.